


Passenger Seat

by darcia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:39:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcia/pseuds/darcia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warm-up blurbs that mean a lot and a little, and all take place on a leather bucket seat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passenger Seat

DEAN

Dean, groggily rubbing a pudgy fist in his eye leans over the passenger seat to look at his father behind the wheel. Sam was curled up underneath John's giant leather jacket and Dean couldn't bring himself to wake him and make him share, so he scrambled on his belly over the seat and slid down with a thump next to his father who was nursing a coffee from the gas station some fifty miles back. Def Leppard was softly tapping through the radio. 

Dean fidgeted in the space of time between finally sitting up in the passenger seat next to his father and waiting for sleep to come. He played with the space in his row of teeth where a front tooth had recently fallen out, shifted his feet that could barely touch the floor, idly scratched at his nose. John, side glancing at his boy, reached down to the floor and pulled up the cardboard box that held his collection of cassettes and scooted it on the seat towards Dean. Dean lifted a toothy smile at John and began to loudly shuffle through the cassettes, until he victoriously held one up and pushed it into the cassette player. "Freebird" started to swell through the car. Sammy shifted in the backseat and John smiled at Dean, giving him an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder. 

The night slowly passed over the reaching gaze of the Impala's headlights. Dean looked up and saw the same night sky, a constant on the horizon, over the dark blur of trees on either side of the highway. Dean had thought, on the fringes of sleep when his eyes were heavy and his cheek was resting against the window, that they weren't really moving. The road would fold in on itself and the world traveled for them. The wind quietly pulling through the partly open window pulled at his hair lightly, like a mother's touch. Dean thought it had worked when the last thing he would see was the black mosh of trees moving sixty miles an hours, then he would wake, blinking into the sun streaming through the windshield from behind "Martha's Diner," somewhere in Texas. Behind him in the backseat, Sam would start to stir, pushing the leather jacket to the floor. 

SAM

The passenger door would screech as Sam threw it open and stumbled out, cursing under his breath. A crinkling avalanche of fast food wrappers fall to the ground. Sam stomped over to a lonely steel trash bin, banged up and dusty, threw in this garbage, and turned to glare at Dean who just stood near the Impala, one foot on her frame, the other on the ground, and flashed him a smile as he waggled his eyebrows and hustled into the driver's seat. Sam stood there, defiant. First his arms crossed tightly over his body, wrapped in a chunky Carhart jacket, then reckless, thrown out to the sides, defensive. Sam would yell to no avail, pointing at the road, then in the other direction, then at himself. And Dean would lean over to look at him through the passenger side window, and slowly raise his hand to crank the radio, lip syncing to Kansas. 

Sam turns his back and shakes his head, his shoulders fall and his feet shift. He glances back over to Dean, still singing and smiling, still big brother and big bear hugs and that damn leather jacket that's too big for him. Dean gestures outward, toward the profile of the Impala that Sam sees, big and black and beautiful, a small starburst that gleans off the hood in the sinking sunshine on this dusty road in the middle of Nowhere. 

Sam smiles to himself, it's really the only thing he's ever known, and finally, slides into the passenger seat. He settles into the worn leather, and Dean reaches over, affectionately grabs at the scruff of his neck and belts out the last few notes of the song. 

CASTIEL

Castiel will, inevitably, grudgingly, blissfully fall in love with riding shotgun. He will learn to desire the feeling of flying, and crank all the windows down. His favorite is the cooling kiss of early morning dew and the winking sun through a thin film of hazy fog. Dean will rub the sleep from him eyes, his hands warm from cradling a cup of coffee. Sometimes Sam will roar out a yawn from the backseat, but he will mostly stay tucked in bed, inside the batcave. He will learn to love curling into Dean's worn plaid, then leaving it tossed over the seat as the sun warms the leather. 

He will get used to the grease and sweat and dirt and heat from Dean showing him how to keep the Impala in cherry condition. Cas won't mention that he doesn't know what fruit has to do with checking the Impala's transmission. 

He will enjoy leaning back on her hood, watching the blinking stars from above watch them. He won't say anything about who is behind them.

Then when he and Dean drive back to the batcave, Led Zeppelin doling out a tune, Dean will mumble along with Robert and reach out to the passenger side, settling a hand on Cas's knee. And Cas will place his cool hand on Dean's rough one, and lean his other hand out the open window, piercing through the breeze. 

And on those early mornings a coating of dew will cover the Impala, giving her a shining opalescent glare. Cas will place a hand on her hood, and pull it away to leave a handprint, only to see it fade as the warmth recedes. He will give her a passing glance at the end of the day. She might have been their car: their home, their refuge, a sterling black steed. But they were her boys: brothers, cowboys, wandering knights. 

And they were family.


End file.
